The human brain is puzzling — it is curiously large given the size of our bodies, uses a tremendous amount of energy for its weight and has a bizarrely dense cerebral cortex. But: why? Neuroscientist Suzana Herculano-Houzel puts on her detective’s cap and leads us through this mystery. By making “brain soup,” she arrives at a startling conclusion.

Suzana Herculano-Houzel shrunk the human brain by 14 billion neurons — by developing a new way to count them. Full bio »

This video talks about the historical impact of freeing time of our lives from eating by cooking our food. This enables us to do other things with our brains, thus evolving as human beings. For those of us who are not mad on cooking, this is a good motivator. Lets spend enough time in the kitchen so that we can go and use our brains afterwards.